Standalone Firewall Recommendation?

[Anonymous_13 31]

Can anyone recommend me an active developed standalone firewall software for Windows (Windows 10) ?

It should be a NON us-based company and its important that its NOT from any AV developer (like Comodo or Norton or whatever).

 

The only one that I know is Jetico Personal Firewall but they stopped developing it.

[rainmakerraw 94]

You're making a big ask, it seems. There's Outpost Firewall (paid) or their firewall/AV (free suite available). They're based in Russia but they violate your no-AV-ties critera. Then there's PrivateFirewall which gets good feedback. They're a non-AV company but based in OH, USA. Outpost's free firewall is discontinued and they later developed into an AV company, though not US based. You may struggle, but I'd be interested to see any suggestions that transpire.

 

Honestly though, if you want a fully featured, secure and excellent standalone firewall with no AV company ties and no US-affiliation you might be better off just building a mini-ITX box and installing pfSense, IPFire or similar.

[Anonymous_13 31]

Thing is then I would have to manage the stuff in an extremely unproductive way. I just want to block all outgoing traffic from many apps and especially Windows from calling home.

But an external firewall I cannot control per-app-based I would have to create filters on zones/ip-ranges and then I would have to know which of my legal apps connects to which IP and IP may change so I have to connect to the external firewall and change the IP. Too much effort.

 

Currently I'm using an app that controls the windows firewall and alerts me when an app goes online and i can choose to deny or to allow. But on Windows 10 for example Windows starts to ignore whats inside the hosts file (when its part of Windows itself like Cortana) so I don't know windows firewall will do it either.

Therefore I need a good third party application WITHOUT a whitelist (especially without whitelisting windows and system apps). Jetico Firewall did that, it blocked everything on default.

[internet_user 6]

This is exacly what you need: Netlimiter

 

http://www.netlimiter.com/

[eyes878 43]

Being worried about a firewall developer being based in the USA and using Windows 10 doesn't really fit.

[zhang888 1066]

Define firewall.

For Windows, there are 3 kinds of software that match this term.

 

There is a network packet filter, which is also embedded in Windows and can be quite useful, with a great advantage that you don't have to install additional bloatware.

There are also application aware firewalls, that tell you which process/application is trying to access the internet, and can be configured accordingly.

Other category is something called OSFirewall (HIPS) that is also doing some anti-malware and anti-rootkit functions.

 

Here is a resource with some good info regarding some popular products, with leak tests.

http://www.matousec.com/projects/proactive-security-challenge-64/results.php

[rainmakerraw 94]

Define firewall.

For Windows, there are 3 kinds of software that match this term.

 

There is a network packet filter, which is also embedded in Windows and can be quite useful, with a great advantage that you don't have to install additional bloatware.

There are also application aware firewalls, that tell you which process/application is trying to access the internet, and can be configured accordingly.

Other category is something called OSFirewall (HIPS) that is also doing some anti-malware and anti-rootkit functions.

 

Here is a resource with some good info regarding some popular products, with leak tests.

http://www.matousec.com/projects/proactive-security-challenge-64/results.php

 

All true, and good advice. Since the OP is wanting a firewall (of whatever) description that is both unaffiliated with an AV vendor and non-US, I think he's going to struggle unless be builds a standalone box himself. Out of interest OP, I can see why you might want to avoid US sourced software (though as eyes878 rightly points out, that's useless when you're already running Windows 10!). However I don't quite get why you want to avoid a firewall that's affiliated with an AV vendor. Most of them today are, for obvious reasons. Netfilter is a good shout, I'd forgotten about that (too long on Linux lol). I tended to use Comodo on Windows boxes, or (Vista and above) a Windows firewall control app. 

 

Why not disable Cortana and the other spyware and then default to Windows' own firewall? There's a handy little utility someone on Reddit made which allows you to do it through a simple GUI. You can download it (or an exe version) on Github here.

[OmniNegro 155]

I use and adore PrivateFirewall. It is freeware and does not nag you about anything. And there is a good and a bad side to it. It has been years since it was last updated. Give it a try before messing with anything even potentially commercial.